Mixed gender events and Ski Big Air coming to Beijing 2022

olympics.com.au

BEIJING 2022: Youth appeal and gender equality are the key themes around the seven new exciting events the IOC have added to the Olympic programme for Beijing 2022.

The programme features the addition of new events with women’s monobob and men’s and women’s freestyle ski big air, as well as the addition of mixed team events in short track speed skating, ski jumping, aerial skiing and snowboard cross.

The new event programme will see more female athletes than any other Winter Olympic Games, with the female quota positions increasing from 41% to 45.44%.

“The addition of these new events for Beijing 2022 reflects our continued commitment to make the Olympic Games programmes more youthful and gender balanced,” the IOC Sports Director Kit McConnell said in today’s announcement.

“I am very pleased to see the increase of female athletes, especially in such exciting, ground-breaking events.”

CEO of the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia (OWIA), Geoff Lipshit, said today’s announcement offers a number of exciting opportunities for Australia’s Winter Olympic future.

“This presents a really good opportunity for us, especially with the addition of ski big air and the mixed snowboard cross team event,” Lipshut said.

“We have just started a new Park and Pipe Program at Perisher and Jindabyne which is a three way partnership between the OWIA, NSW Institute of Sport, and Ski and Snowboard Australia. This is the first dedicated Park and Pipe program in Australia which will develop freestyle skiing and snowboard athletes in the disciplines of slopestyle, halfpipe and big air over the next four years leading into 2022.

“At PyeongChang 2018 we saw a 17-year-old American snowboarder win gold in the slopestyle, and two 16-year-old New Zealand medallists in snowboard halfpipe and big air. So, if we learnt anything from this year’s Games it’s that we need to be looking at the really young guys because that’s where the money is.

“We’re bringing in young athletes around the ages of 14 and 15 for this new program, so there is a lot of good opportunity there for future Games.”

With a large Australian men’s contingent already established in snowboard cross, Lipshut hopes the new mixed team event will attract more women to the discipline and Australia will be in with a good chance.

“We already have a lot of strong talent in snowboard cross, it would be a great opportunity if Belle Brockhoff teamed with Jarryd Hughes, Chumpy Pullin or Adam Lambert, for example.

“We recently had a meeting with the snowboard cross team and the athletes said they would like to work on more team relay skills, and this was before the announcement of the event in the Games, so this is definitely a real opportunity for us.

The IOC has also reduced the overall athlete quota by 41 to reach 2,892, which is within the Olympic Charter framework.

The 2022 programme will now have 109 gold medals up for grabs.

Georgia Thompson
olympics.com.au